Yes, this is a ripoff of the 1989 classic “Heather Has Two Mommies” — but in title only not in plot.
“Rebecca Has Two Mommies” is a maternal tale not of partnership but of parallel universes.
And it’s the story of a child – caught in between – who had no choice in the matter.
Many of my U&U followers have read the story of Rebecca’s return to my life, in one or more of these posts:
I have shouted this story from the rooftops every way I know how both here and in print and on the Story District stage.
For forty-five years out of fear, out of shame, I locked Rebecca away. I was seventeen years-old and kicked out of my Roman Catholic household, the Hester Prynne of my high school. My sin was so mortal, it was dangerous even to speak of it.
My father’s medical practice would be ruined. So Father Kelso, the parish priest (I believe), with a wink and a nod, assured my parents I could be sent to some discrete location. To spare them the scandal. Some Magdalen Laundry. Some home for unwed mothers.
That’s what happened to knocked-up pregnant teenage girls in 1972.
But William and I forged a different path – disowned and on our own.
The Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision was about to come down. But I never struggled with my choice. It was a no-brainer. It simply did not occur to me to “terminate” her or to vacuum her out through a tube. (While I totally understand and support the difficult choices that other women make.)
She was a life inside me. She made me throw up in the mornings. She kicked my insides. She gave me stretch marks. For nine months, occupying my every crevice, she was my most intimate companion. It was just the two of us in the delivery room the day that she was born. No other family members were there.
A child, I gave birth to a child I was unable to keep. The social worker from Pierce Warwick collected her later that week. And handed her over to her older, more stable, more educated, more mature, the so much more ready adoptive mom and dad.
Two people for whom I will be forever grateful.
But before I could let her go, I had to fill out the form. Her birth certificate lay on my hospital tray table. My hand shaking, I filled in the blanks.
Baby Name: Elizabeth Catherine
Name of Mother: Joan Louise Peacock (Me, that’s me.)
Signature of Mother: J o a n________ (Me, that’s me.)
A sealed adoption, this form was locked up tight in a D.C. courthouse for 45 years. In fact, its locked there still.
And for a year and a half now, Rebecca and I have gotten to know one another. We’ve grown close. It’s really quite impossible to imagine my life without her.
I am not her parent. I am Joani. I am bio-mom. But after 18 months, bio has become a cumbersome distinction.
Rebecca says that people have fought for a long time to have two moms. So she reserves the right to call both the mother who raised her and the mother who gave her birth – simply mom.
Rebecca has taught me much about the realities of the adopted life. An adopted child is the only person in adoption who has no choice in the matter.
Adoptees live in an in between world. They are grateful for their adoptive parents and genuinely love the families they grow up in. Simultaneously, they yearn to know where they came from — not just for information but for connection. The hope of reunion. It’s a both/and aspiration.
But many adoptees grow up in an either/or world. DNA does not matter anymore. Only love does, so the adoptee is told. So whatever came before does not matter. In fact, it’s something you shouldn’t talk about or ask about. Because after all, we’re your real family.
And of course, they are. Of course, that is true.
But an adoptee’s life does not begin at adoption. It begins at birth.
Its not just a story of joy, but of grief and loss. Adoption is often born of trauma.
And the stories of the birth moms are written out of the story — whatever their story may be.
Rebecca’s birth certificate, her certificate of live birth has her adoptive mother’s name where mine used to be.
I was so startled. Already a thing of shame, I was erased, irrelevant, like a Handmaid to a Commander’s wife in the Margaret Atwood tale.
Made invisible.
I am one of untold numbers of silent 1970’s birth moms of the “Baby Scoop Era.”
Since I have told my Rebecca story in print, in the pulpit, on stage a swarm of people have come up to me to share their own. That’s my story too. I was adopted. I adopted a child. I adopted a baby from a teenage mother.
But not a single woman has told me that they did what I did. Not a single one.
Because, I believe, even though it is 2018, the shame resonates still.
The birth mom is a sinner. The adoptive mom is a savior.
It is the ultimate and unforgivable sin for a woman to give up a child. You abandoned her, didn’t you?
And so people like me are written out of the story. And because of the shame, we keep writing ourselves out of the story, as well.
But not anymore. No longer hiding, I refuse to be invisible.
And I want to help other birth mothers like me to come out, as well.
So I am determined to write this story — a truer story.
And guess what it’s called?
Rebecca Has Two Moms.
Of course.
(And stay tuned for a guest post from Rebecca!)
It is real, complex, multi-layered and I will likely be trying to make heads and tails of it for the rest of my life. Adoption, my adoption, JUST IS. It is not all good, it is not all bad. It is what it is. And it sure is fun to reunite. It is exhilarating to finally see context for my features, my temperament and way of thinking. I would take gaining new siblings as an adult again and again, even with the conflicting life of an adoptee. This adventure of reunion could never have happened without the event that triggered my needing a reunion.